'Every issue that Muslims are facing today affects Muslim women. But how come women's issues don't affect the community?'
'How does the community benefit by the practice of halala or polygamy?'
85% Sunni Muslim women want polygamy to be banned, and 87% want their husbands punished for the practice, discovered a survey conducted across 7 states by the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA). Its report Breaking the Silence, released in Mumbai, breaks many myths.
Community spokesmen often cite the following grounds as valid reasons for taking a second wife: Childlessness, the first wife's ill health and her 'bad temper'. It's also said that since polygamy is allowed under Islam, both wives live happily in the same house.
The survey demolishes these myths.
Muslim women surveyed categorically state that marrying again while already being married could not be justified for any reason whatsoever. Also, none of the 2,500 women surveyed live in harmony with the other wife.
However, behind the statistics lie the voices of the affected women. The 22 case studies reproduced in the report reveal the depth of suffering brought about by the second marriage. From physical violence to emotional devastation so strong that it makes them sick, these women speak of lives destroyed by a mere whim of their husbands who justify it saying their religion permitted it.
The BMMA was one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court against triple talaq, which was struck down in 2017. Their petition had also asked for a ban on polygamy and nikah halala, but these were not taken up.
Dr Noorjehan Safia Niaz, co-founder, BMMA, speaks to Jyoti Punwani about the implications of the survey findings.
Did you expect these responses from the survey? Not just the numbers of women who want a ban on polygamy, but the depth of suffering revealed in the case studies?
We've been handling such cases for so many years, so we knew what happens to women in bigamous marriages. But we didn't have the numbers. If you want to create evidence, you have to go about it scientifically. The survey confirmed what we thought.
Is the community at large aware of this suffering and the scale of the opposition to polygamy? Individual families whose daughters have suffered would be aware, but beyond that?
What do you mean by "the community"?
Those who benefit from this practice don't want to acknowledge the woman's suffering. Which man when he beats his wife thinks of her suffering? For him, it's all about his feelings and his power over her.
If you are referring to Muslim religious institutions, they just want to maintain their hegemony over the community, no matter how bad the women's conditions may be. Things must go on as they are is their view.
Many Muslims don't even see polygamy as a major problem, saying very few Muslims marry a second time, and other communities do so more than Muslims.
It's not about scale. The issue is why a certain legislation is not applicable to a community.
A Hindu woman has the choice to approach the courts when her husband remarries. Many Hindu women may choose not to do so. That choice should be available to Muslim women. Let her not go to court. But the problem is, right now, access to such a law itself is not there.
Even if it's one woman, she needs this access. This gap between women of other communities and Muslim women should not exist. It doesn't matter which community has more men marrying again; the question is of accessibility to the law.
Given the continuous onslaught on Muslims and their identity under this government, do you think the demand to ban polygamy should be kept aside till the atmosphere is more conducive?
"This is not the right time" -- how many times have we heard this objection! There's never ever been a right time to raise Muslim women's issues!
It's soon going to be 100 years since the first reform began in laws relating to Muslim women's rights. In 1937, the first law, the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, was passed because the community demanded that it be governed by the Shariat rather than customary practice. Inheritance rights, specially, were better in the Shariat than what was being followed as custom.
Then in 1939, Muslim women got the right to go to court for a divorce.
These were the beginnings of law reform for Muslim women. Had Partition not taken place, Muslims may have been the first community to codify their law.
The next law came only in 1985. Nothing much could happen in the years immediately after Independence because of the trauma of Partition, but from 1947 right up to 1985, nothing happened.
And what a warped law it was -- the Muslim Women's (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, passed after the Shah Bano case. The law pulled Muslim women out of a benefit they already enjoyed, that of life long maintenance on divorce. Its positive interpretation came only in 2001 (Danial Latifi vs Union of India), after the Supreme Court heard all the challenges to it.
The next law for Muslim women came only in 2019: The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, criminalising triple talaq. Look at the time span: 1985-2019.
So to those who say the time is not right because the BJP is in power, we say: What were you doing for the last almost 80 years? You had a beautiful opportunity in the Shah Bano case to make a law that would benefit Muslim women. The Central government was one you favoured (a Congress government was in power at the Centre), one which had your back.
Why did you lose that opportunity? How can you now ask Muslim women to wait for the right time?
This government has already lasted 11 years. We don't know how much longer it will survive. When will the right time come?
Again, when you say "the community" is under attack by this government, what do you mean by "the community"? Are women not central to the community?
Muslim women's issues are seen as separate from "community issues", but community issues are seen as women's issues. There can be no argument about that: Every issue that Muslims are facing today affects Muslim women. But how come women's issues don't affect the community? How does the community benefit by the practice of halala or polygamy?
We challenge this idea of community which excludes women; this binary which sees women's issues as separate from community issues.
This survey finds the mental health of the first wife seriously affected by the husband's second marriage. Is there any practical solution to that?
We specifically wanted to know, apart from issues such as maintenance, what does the woman feel in her innermost being, when her husband marries again. We found that not just was the woman's mental health affected, but that affected her children too. They stopped playing, stopped going to school, felt sad all the time...
Being a mental health professional, I know that many of the problems that adults face go back to the first 8 years of their lives. When the mother goes through helplessness, pain and anger, it spreads to her children, and this affects their entire adult life.
We are a small organisation, but to the extent of our capacity, we have started outreach on mental health since 2023. We must have reached out to 5,000 women and children. We give them practical tips: Breathing exercises, ways of changing their thought processes.
We are also creating mental health trainers and community counsellors. 24 youth have started training and we also have a small fellowship for them.
Are the women receptive? There is a stigma attached to admitting that you need help with your mental health.
Yes, when they come to our Shariat courts, after handling the legal aspect of their cases, we suggest they talk to our counsellors. They immediately retort: "Hum pagal thodi hain (we are not mad)." It takes time to convince them that it's normal to talk about their emotions with someone else.
One defence of polygamy offered is that at least Islam gives the second wife the status of a wife, whereas in other religions, she's just a mistress.
If the second wife feels she will lose her status as a wife by accessing a law which prohibits polygamy, let her not use it.
The survey shows that the first wife bears most of the damage. She pays more dowry, gets less mehr, and has a lesser say in the marriage. She's normally forced to leave the marital home.
So those who defend polygamy -- are they ok with letting the second wife benefit while the first wife suffers?
Forget anything else, what about the woman's dignity? Law is not just about ensuring food and shelter. The dignity of the woman -- be it the first or the second wife -- matters.
Your petition to ban polygamy is lying unheard. Will you have to file another, with the findings of this survey?
We haven't decided anything.
First, we plan to distribute the summary of the survey within the community.
Have you engaged with the ulema and the All India Muslim Personal Law Board on this issue?
Our engagement with the ulema would need another full length interview!
Even before BMMA was founded, I've been engaging, along with other women activists, with the ulema. We even used to send cases to them. That's when we realised they are the root of the problem.
We've sat with many of them, multiple times. But we found a total reluctance to acknowledge women's problems.
This is what they told us: 'Why are you talking about the rights of women in the Koran? Only muftis who can read the Koran in Arabic are equipped to talk about this. You cover your face first before talking to us.'
On every issue that we've gone to court for, we first tried talking to them. We realised we were breaking our heads against the wall.
When we wanted to train women as qazis, we went to them first. Not possible, they said, when we knew all over the world, and even in India, there exist women qazis. So we developed our own syllabus and trained women to become qazis.
If you don't share your authority, we'll create our own. Neither the Koran nor the Constitution stops us from doing so.
We also realised that we were giving organisations such as the AIMPLB too much importance. They are just an NGO like we are. Why give them a status they don't deserve?
Only Parliament can make laws, and as citizens, Parliament is as much ours as theirs. So we directly approached Parliament and when that failed, we went to court.
At any rate, after the way the AIMPLB trolled us and dragged our personal lives into the public sphere after we approached the court to ban triple talaq, we've decided we won't stoop to engaging with them.
But we have found many unknown local maulanas very sympathetic and helpful. But they don't want any publicity.
The late Islamic scholar and reformist Asghar Ali Engineer had always been a guide for your work. Have there been others?
Yes, he was the only one. So many big names in progressive and feminist circles, would personally agree with us, but when it came to taking a public stand, they'd go back on their promise. Only Asghar Ali Engineer stuck publicly to the stand he took privately. And he bore the brunt for doing so.
This peacemeal reform: First a ban on triple talaq, now hopefully, a ban on polygamy, must be frustrating for you who work among women and know their problems.
It is.
What Muslims need is a comprehensive codified law, which we have prepared after wide ranging consultations with ordinary women and Islamic scholars from 2006 till 2013.
Every community in India has its own codified law, except Muslims, the third largest Muslim population in the world.
Would you support the BJP's Uniform Civil Code? The ones in Uttarakhand and Assam bans polygamy.
We have 25 points specifically relating to Muslims that must be included in a Uniform Civil Code. They include positive features such as mehr, a right which must not be taken away, to negatives like child marriage, in banning which there should be no exceptions for Muslims.
But after seeing the way the UCC has been hammered down people's throats in Uttarakhand and Assam, without consultations; and the way couples in live in and inter-religious relationships have been hounded, we feel this is not the way. Any UCC must be widely debated.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
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